Five Days

We are exhausted after five days of walking. Today the walk through farms was quiet and pretty but completely lacking in cafes or stores.

We saw lots of wheat, vineyards, and tomatoes. It was windy and cool but forecast for Thursday is 22c and sunny.

Day before yesterday we walked along a very busy highway with little shoulder for hours to reach Azambuja.We called it the Pilgrim Highway of Death. But the day ended in a small house with 5 pilgrim friends being served mounds of home cooked food and copious local wine. I’m writing that story separately, “The Angel of Misericordia.”

We are staying in a private room in N1 Hostel in Santarém- more expensive than we usually get but this is the jumping off point for a big weekend celebration at Fátima and we’re happy to get a room of any kind. It is ultra-modern and we discovered that most of our pilgrim family is here- Alejandro and the Sloth, Hans Peter and Alicia, but all are splitting off to see Fátima and we may not see them again. Iris and Jonathan fell behind today.

At dinner tonight in the hostel we made some new friends, Kelvin the soccer coach (Belgium) and Allison (California) Camino mom (back left). Hans-Peter and Alicia (Germany) are in the front.

The Sloth and Alejandro.

In a few hours we are back on the road. We bought chorizo,cheese, and bread for another grueling 20 km day with no cafes, but we already have a bed lined up so we can take long rests. Our Pilgrim family is breaking up, tomorrow we will make a new one.